jimjawn wrote:

Hey all!

I've been using linux for a few months now and I want to start getting more involved in working on open source projects. I figured the best way for me to get started would be to add an itch that needed to be sratched for me personally to something I'm already using. In any event, I'd like to contribute to roundcube. I've used it successfully a bunch of times and I just love its simplicity and its ease of setup. That being said, the one thing that I wish I could do with it is to check my email from my cell phone. Sort of in the spirit of m.gmail.com http://m.gmail.com/, I wanted to pass it on the developers and see what you think.

I've included kind of a rough markup http://growinguplinux.com/images/m_roundy.png of an interface that I think I can build, less perhaps the grouping by conversation feature.
Well at least I think I can. I've been going through the code and its complexity and depth are staggering IMHO. For some reason I thought simple interface = simple codebase. While the code is well commented and very, very eloquent, at this point its a bit above my knowledge of PHP & javascript. However, I'm not going to let that dishearten me.
I'm down for a challenge.

So I have a few questions for some of the devs on this list.

1. How modular is the interface? I've been going through the code and it seems like some HTML is hardwired into the program (but some of the code I'm having a hard time understanding). Is this the case? Is there an easy way to plug in an alternative interface besides a common web browser w/ajax support? Is something like this even possible with roundcube?
2. I've been looking at the wurfl http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/php/ and wall http://wall.laacz.lv/ and thought that it would be easy to build a WAP/HTML interface like a roundcube_wall_page() using these libraries and I'd like to give it a whirl but I'm still trying to figure out how the code is structured beyond the introductory info in the help file.
3. Is there any rudimentary docmentation or diagrams that help explain the system design from a higher level? Is there some sort of autodocumentation program that I can help build or get involved in until I understand this system better? Something that strips tags out of the code and automatically builds documentation or something? How about a developers guide?
4. What functions can I call that will allow me to: List all of the IMAP folders, get the messages from the IMAP server in some sort of organzied array, and basically just work with the IMAP stuff at a lower level. Is there a roundcube IMAP ilohamail wrapper class?

If I'm not using the right language please correct me. This is a great, great open source product and I'd love to be able to contribute in some manner or fashion. Thanks for reading this and I'm hoping I'll be able to contribute some way.

jimjawn

Fakaofa since 2003 - http://palangifiles.com

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this but....

IMHO Roundcube was meant more for the desktop environment. Utilizing AJAX and other desktop capable technologies (faster processors, more memory, etc.) is something AJAX does. And since roundcube is an AJAX Webmail Client, putting it on a phone with little Java support AND less memory and CPU power, it's just useless.

What makes roundcube what it is, is the interface and how closely it resembles a real desktop application. This isn't to say that roundcube can't be put on a phone; acutally, roundcube could be applied to a phone, but it would lose the essence of what it is. Roundcube is meant to mimick Outlook, Thunderbird, kMail, iMail and the like. I don't believe (correct me if I'm wrong) but I don't believe any programs like that are on cell phones. Phone makers create their own mail programs.

So while a phone would be a great level to make it to, I don't think phones are ready yet. They aren't powerful enough, nor do they have enough memory. We've already seen that the 8MB limit is too small for some mailings and needs to be increased to 32. Not really sure how much memory your phone has in it, but 32 is pushing it for me.

These are just my opinions, and not the opinions of any Dev of Roundcube. Take them with a grain of salt.

Hi,

There already have been some discussions about this topic. RoundCube is a simple IMAP client for XHTML and CSS capable browsers. The HTML that is hard-coded is kept very simple without any styling. Never the less, I don't think RoundCube has to serve multiple devices since it's based on IMAP and does not hold any proprietary data (except the address book which is subject to be linked to LDAP or any synch tools).

As mentioned in this post (http://lists.roundcube.net/mail-archive/roundcube.dev/2006/05/99/) any efforts in making your IMAP mailbox accessible through WAP/mobile phones should be done as a separate OSS project. RoundCube's architecture is focused on desktop browsers and there isn't much code that could be re-used for a wap client. Probably the IMAP wrapper could be interesting for that but this isn't even original RoundCube :-)

Regards, Thomas

jimjawn wrote:

Hey all!

I've been using linux for a few months now and I want to start getting more involved in working on open source projects. I figured the best way for me to get started would be to add an itch that needed to be sratched for me personally to something I'm already using. In any event, I'd like to contribute to roundcube. I've used it successfully a bunch of times and I just love its simplicity and its ease of setup. That being said, the one thing that I wish I could do with it is to check my email from my cell phone. Sort of in the spirit of m.gmail.com http://m.gmail.com/, I wanted to pass it on the developers and see what you think.

I've included kind of a rough markup http://growinguplinux.com/images/m_roundy.png of an interface that I think I can build, less perhaps the grouping by conversation feature. Well at least I think I can. I've been going through the code and its complexity and depth are staggering IMHO. For some reason I thought simple interface = simple codebase. While the code is well commented and very, very eloquent, at this point its a bit above my knowledge of PHP & javascript. However, I'm not going to let that dishearten me. I'm down for a challenge.

So I have a few questions for some of the devs on this list.

1. How modular is the interface? I've been going through the code and it seems like some HTML is hardwired into the program (but some of the code I'm having a hard time understanding). Is this the case? Is there an easy way to plug in an alternative interface besides a common web browser w/ajax support? Is something like this even possible with roundcube?
2. I've been looking at the wurfl http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/php/ and wall http://wall.laacz.lv/ and thought that it would be easy to build a WAP/HTML interface like a roundcube_wall_page() using these libraries and I'd like to give it a whirl but I'm still trying to figure out how the code is structured beyond the introductory info in the help file.
3. Is there any rudimentary docmentation or diagrams that help explain the system design from a higher level? Is there some sort of autodocumentation program that I can help build or get involved in until I understand this system better? Something that strips tags out of the code and automatically builds documentation or something? How about a developers guide?
4. What functions can I call that will allow me to: List all of the IMAP folders, get the messages from the IMAP server in some sort of organzied array, and basically just work with the IMAP stuff at a lower level. Is there a roundcube IMAP ilohamail wrapper class?

If I'm not using the right language please correct me. This is a great, great open source product and I'd love to be able to contribute in some manner or fashion. Thanks for reading this and I'm hoping I'll be able to contribute some way.

jimjawn

Fakaofa since 2003 - http://palangifiles.com

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